Managing Your Mailing List

1) Click the Add a Member button.

2) Click the Add Members quickly in a grid button.

3) Click the Import Members from a file button.

Add a Member

To add a single Member, click .

Fill in the information, and then click .

Add Members Quickly Through a Grid

This method is faster than adding one member at a time, but more limited.

This works well when you have many Members listed on paper or in a format

that cannot be exported to a text file.

The chief limitation to this means of adding Members is that you can only add

these Members to a single Group, where with the Single Entry method; you

can add a person to multiple Groups. Once these Members are added to the

Mailing List, you can add them to as many Groups as is necessary.

Import a Text File

Newsletter Ease can accept comma-delimited or tab-delimited files.

Newsletter Ease will determine which fields in a text file represent the Member's

email address and name. If it doesn't recognize the data, you can manually select

the appropriate fields from the Import Field As menu. We cover importing in

more detail in the next section.

Importing Members

You might have your mailing list in another database or stored in email software,

like Microsoft Outlook. If so, most programs offer some method of exporting a

mailing list in either a "comma-delimited" or "tab-delimited" format. Simply

stated, it looks like this:

Comma-delimited:

"Mike Jonasson","mjonasson@workplace.com"

"Emily Rademaker","emilyr123@hotmail.com"

Tab-delimited:

Mike Jonasson mjonasson@workplace.com

Emily Rademaker emilyr123@hotmail.com

When exporting your list, the only required column of information is the email

address field.

Exporting Mailing Lists From Common Applications

Exporting From Outlook:

Click on the folder that contains the subscribers. Then go to File/Import and

Export in the menu. Then you’ll see this series of windows. Do as we demonstrate here:

Exporting From Excel:

Go to File > Save As in the menu. Choose CSV (Comma Delimited) as the

file type.

Exporting From Access:

Go to File > Export in the menu. Be sure that you have the right table/query

selected. Then follow the steps below:

Once you've created you export file, return to Newsletter Ease and go to the

Subscribers page. Click Import Members From A File . This opens a

window asking you to locate the TXT or CSV file.

Click , which opens the following window:

This opens a window that will let you choose the fields that represent the

subscriber name and email address. From this window, find the field that holds

data that you need and right-click on it.

Once you identify the fields, scroll through the data to verify that the import will

process your file correctly. When you finish verifying the data click .

Your members now appear in the Members tab of your Mailing List. You may

want to double-check the list to ensure that the names, email address, and

greeting (typically the subscriber's first name) came through as expected.

To export your subscriber list to a text file too just by clicking Export Members

to A File .

Mailing Lists

The Mailing List feature of Newsletter Ease provides quite a bit of management

power to you. The buttons are arranged as follows:

Mailing Lists aren't just about your subscribed list of people. To get the most out

of Newsletter Ease, be sure that you feel comfortable with this next section.

Here's what happens when you send an email from Newsletter Ease.

You send a message from you to your newsletter subscribers.

If an email goes out from you to an email address that is no longer valid, a reply is

automatically sent back to you informing you that the email address is no longer

valid. This is called a bounce back.

When someone hits the Reply button to respond to your email, it's typically sent

back to this same sending email account.

In this way, your sending account is directly tied to any response from your

audience. Newsletter Ease recognizes this and ties sending and receiving

together. For this reason, you see the sending email account settings through a

particular mailing list.

Choosing the sending email account you use to publish an issue is somewhat

strategic. When deciding the account you want to use, first consider how you

want to handle responses.

There are many aspects of managing your mailing list. Here are some

considerations:

Sending Email Account Settings

Email Account Settings - this is the "From" part of sending email. Typically,

once this is set up, it's seldom touched again.

Member Data Entry - how do you get everyone into Newsletter Ease?

Publishing to Multiple Groups

Mailing Lists or Groups?

In a nutshell, a Mailing List is the entire audience that will receive email from a

particular sending email account. A Group is a portion of that audience. There is

no limit on the number of Groups within a Mailing List.

A Mailing List is linked directly to the sending email account used when

publishing to the Mailing List audience. Everyone in the audience will receive

email from the sending account. Likewise, any automated management of the

Mailing List by Newsletter Ease will affect anyone who receives an Issue sent

to the Mailing List.

Two questions you need to ask yourself when deciding whether to use a new

mailing list:

Do you want some messages to appear to be from different email accounts? If so,

you'll need to use multiple mailing lists.

If you send different types of publications, do you want to ensure that a person

who unsubscribe from one publication doesn't accidentally unsubscribe from

every publication? If so, you'll want to use multiple mailing lists.

For example, let's say you send periodic announcements to everyone on your list.

You also send a monthly newsletter. If you only use one Mailing List and a

person who doesn't want the newsletter unsubscribes, the person will be removed

from the mailing list. If you send announcements through the same Mailing

List, everyone unsubscribed would not receive any announcements.

When Would You Use a Group?

A Group is only a portion of a Mailing List audience. When it doesn't matter if

the sending account remains the same, Groups can make life a great deal easier

than managing two different mailing lists.

For example, a principal might want to send email to everyone in the school, both

students and faculty. Sometimes, she may want to send email only to teachers,

and other times, only to students. Either way, her email sending account would

probably remain the same.

Managing Groups

You want to use Groups when you want to send different messages to different

groups of people, but you use the same sending email account to maintain your

identity among everyone. A school principal, for example, would use groups to

send differentiate what is sent to teachers and to students, but she would

maintain the same identity when sending to either group.

Let's look at a Mailing List using this example.

To create a group of teachers, you first select the members of the group by using

the Ctrl key and selecting each member with your mouse.

You then click the Add Selected Members to Group button.

The Select Group window displays a list of existing groups and also helps you

to create a new group on the spot. We'll click to create a new

'Teachers' group. Once the window opens, simply enter the name of your new

group.

Notice the option to mark a group as a Preview Group. This is a group that will

appear in the Recipients drop-down when you preview an issue. This allows you

to designate a Group for the specific purpose of sending them a sample copy of

an Issue for proofreading.

Once you create your group, click until you return to the main

mailing list window. The list will be filtered to your new group to help you verify

the new group and its members.

The View drop-down at the right of the window helps you choose different filters

on your mailing list.

Groups are displayed within the drop-down.

The mailing list is good for viewing all members at a glance, but what if you

wanted to view all Groups? Click the Manage Groups button .

All Groups and their associated members are shown here. It's easy to add or

remove members from a Group within this window.

To remove a member, just select the member, or members, and click the

Remove selected members from Group button .

To add a member, click the appropriate button .

This opens a window to help you find the member, or members, to be added.

Just select those to be added and then click .

Managing Responses

If you own a list larger than 100 members, managing the list can be a chore. If

your list is more than 1,000 subscribers, managing the list by hand is a full-time

job.

Take advantage of Newsletter Ease Response Management capabilities.

Newsletter Ease can capture responses to a POP or IMAP email account, based

on a set of rules you define to process the responses and update the status of your

mailing list members for you.

To get this started, click on Mailing List .

Once you click , the main mailing list window will change - two new

tabs are added.

New Mail is used to capture and process new email responses.

Old Mail stores processed responses.

Retrieving New Mail

Getting new mail couldn't be easier - it only takes the click of a button.

The Retrieve new mail button downloads incoming mail from the sending

account. Each mail as it comes in is color-coded:

Bounce backs are yellow.

Removal requests are red.

Subscriptions are green.

Out of Office and Ignored email are light gray.

After the new mail comes in, you can view it. The View drop-down filters the list

to the different categories of mail that you've received.

Now you need to process the mail. You do that by clicking the Process Mail

button. When processing mail, the status of subscribers is updated.

Here's the original list:

And here's the changed list:

Elissa Baker is now removed.

Brett Rogers has been subscribed.

One other thing... there was a bounce back from Kel Sundstrom, but he's still

subscribed. This is intentional. Sometimes, a hiccup happens on the Internet and

an email will return as a bounce back, even though the address is still valid.

Newsletter Ease has marked Kel as having 1 bounce back. You can see that in the

Member window by double-clicking on him.

See the Bounce back Count? Newsletter Ease will not mark someone as removed

until the second bounceback. If the bouncebacks are in error, you can reset the

count via the drop-down.

If you choose to manage your list by hand, it's easy to unsubscribe and resubscribe

members.

Just click the button to unsubscribe them. If they're already unsubscribed, this

same button works to re-subscribe them.

You can also delete the member if you're sure that you won't need their

information again.

Managing Un-subscribes

What happens when someone asks to be removed from your mailing list? Let's

take a look at how Newsletter Ease helps you with this task.

There are two tabs on the mailing list screen: Members and Excluded.

The Members tab displays those who were entered into your mailing list at

some point.

The Excluded tab displays those who opted out or were otherwise unsubscribed.

The two lists are independent. It's pretty straightforward to understand how

someone got onto the Members list. But how do they get on the Excluded list?

When a person requests removal from your mailing list, they are not deleted from

the Members List. Rather, their status is changed to Removed. While

Removed, a subscriber cannot receive any mailing from you. Newsletter Ease

strictly prevents this. The benefit to keeping a subscriber in the Members List

is that if they were accidentally unsubscribed, you won't need to re-enter their

information. This also allows you to maintain the list as you originally had it in

case you need it for other purposes.

Notice Kel - he's marked as Removed.

In addition to his changed status, he's also been added to the Excluded list.

Again, this list is independent of the Members List.

If all of the members were deleted from the Members List and re-entered, Kel's

status would remain Removed because he is part of the Excluded list. This

means you can, erase the Members list as often as you like while still respecting

the decision of those who have asked to be removed. Only if you erase both the

Members List and the Excluded list and then re-enter the Members List

could a person once removed receive Newsletter Ease email from you.